National
Agricultural Library Purchases Document Delivery Software

The National Agricultural Library
(NAL) has selected the Relais Enterprise
document delivery system to further automate the library's document delivery
services.

Enterprise is an integrated request and delivery management system produced
by Relais International, Inc. Its use
at NAL will streamline the processing of requests for publications, resulting
in greater efficiencies and better service.

NAL annually receives--from customers in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other
organizations and libraries around the world--about 120,000 document delivery
requests for items from the NAL collections. These collections include more
than 3.5 million items of information about food, agriculture and natural
resources. With NAL's use of Relais Enterprise, customers will be able to both
request and receive materials electronically, and to check on the status of
their requests via the World Wide Web.

Relais International is working closely with NAL staff to integrate the
Enterprise system with NAL's new Voyager library system produced by Endeavor
Information Systems, Inc. The Voyager system will be available in late 2003,
while the Enterprise system will become operational in mid-2004.

The National Agricultural Library, in Beltsville, Md., is known for its
expert staff, extensive AGRICOLA bibliographic database of more than 4 million
citations, leadership role in information services and technology applications,
and collections. The NAL is one of four U.S. national libraries, and is part of
the Agricultural Research Service,
USDA's chief scientific research agency.

Relais International is based in Ottawa, Canada, and has been designing
systems for libraries to support interlibrary loan and document delivery
operations since 1996. NAL has had a relationship with Relais International
since 2001, when it implemented Relais's Express document scanning and delivery
system.